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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28186092">Emulation Complex</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Crimson/pseuds/Artemis_Crimson'>Artemis_Crimson</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Illuminae Files - Amie Kaufman &amp; Jay Kristoff</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aka Aidan as the hacker and kady as the Ai, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Artificial Intelligence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Nonbinary Character, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Robot/Human Relationships</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:34:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,620</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28186092</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Crimson/pseuds/Artemis_Crimson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there is an exchange</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>AIDAN (The Illuminae Files) &amp; Ezra Mason, AIDAN/Kady Grant</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. 010011110110111001100101</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Aidan, through one of the few good camera feeds left looks halfway there to being a runway model.<br/>
With that optical illusion lended by sheer height of slender grace, the long limbs, the untouchable sneer. But for the glass straight barely blonde braid too messy. Pale skin, like sickly pale, sun-starved, almost albino. Haughty eyes hidden behind thick, fashion-less frames, screaming they couldn't afford to fix their sight through surgery or gene mods, only a barely existent line of poverty still prevented that. The untouchable sneer. They looked like something dredged out of a prehistoric cave here to talk down to you about password security.</p>
<p></p><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>You can tell that they’re stretched thin picking up all these refugees. Their after action report is up next, you can read that but I’ll say everything except that undershirt was trashed. They’re dressed in Hypatia issue clothing. Aidan is more than a little bit out of the typical scientist’s size range, and instead of fabricating something suitable they’re wearing low g combat boots- marines being closer in stature to their absurd build. More six and half feet at absolute minimum guarantee. What's probably the largest jumpsuit they could find is unzipped, stretched long on them, they’ve tucked the pants into the high boots and their outer sleeves are rolled up above their elbows. They keep folding their arms in front of their chest whenever a breeze brushes past so it’s clearly not for style. They look like if they deigned to feel anything it'd be annoyed, not nervous or shaken. PTSD might have been setting in on anyone else, but not this chum, they’re just cold and pissy. I mention this overall, appearance because it gives context to their report. Which is well, see for yourself.</p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. 010101000111011101101111</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><blockquote>
<p></p><div><p><strong>AIDAN:</strong> -Certain you where trained in psychology? It doesn’t seem like this recording is your area of expertise.</p></div><div><p><strong>HYPATIA PERSONAL:</strong> It’s working now, so let’s get to what happened on Kerenza, do I call you-</p></div><div><p><strong>AIDAN</strong>: My friends could call me Mr, you can call me Aidan or nothing else.</p></div><div><p><strong>HYPATIA PERSONAL:</strong> Could call you, that’s interesting. What are you implying?</p></div><div><p><strong>AIDAN:</strong> Well, if I want to get to the root of the problem, it’s that half of my home is frozen ash. There’s not exactly a lot of people alive who I know left.</p></div><div><p><strong>HYPATIA PERSONAL:</strong> Not everyone died, have you looked through the survivor logs? It updates every half hour you know. It says here you came in with someone, your brother, uh?</p></div><div><p><strong>AIDAN:</strong> Mason. Ezra. He’s not my brother, his Father just, was softhearted. I’m not a Mason, and if Ezra is alive it’s because he’s too thick headed for concrete falling on his head to kill him.</p></div><div><p><strong>HYPATIA PERSONAL:</strong> You don’t even want to look?</p></div><div><p><strong>AIDAN:</strong> I scrapped him off the ice and threw him in an evac shuttle myself. He’s fine. Actually- you’ll keep asking inane questions when what you want is my report. You don’t care about our mental status unless we’re a hazard, and I’m certain it’s been acknowledged that I’m not a hazard to anyone onboard. Let’s just get down to brass tacks <em>hm</em>? It all started one snowy day on an illegal mining colony.</p></div><div><p>Kerenza is a diamond amongst chips of ice. It’s beautiful there. It gets cold enough to freeze the air inside human nostrils. Cold enough that our buildings are built more insulated from that deep freeze than this ship is from the void. We don’t need to worry about permafrost, instead of bedrock we have a glacier to sink our foundations in. This morning was like any other for me- it was the end of my day. I work the late, night shift at the airfield see. I’d come off my lunch break after dawn. I’m just done wrapping up my duties and what do I see on the radar, peaking below the clouds. but Beitech dreadnoughts. Nasty things, pretending to be WUC. They didn’t ping us. I sounded the alarm.</p></div><div><p><strong>HYPATIA PERSONAL</strong>: How did you know they were Beitech?</p></div><div><p><strong>AIDAN:</strong> Aside from the ships being Beitech models, the fact that it’s WUC’s main competition? They had the company logo stencilled on the side. Why pay graphic designers that much to make you something if you aren’t going to stick it on every surface you own.</p></div><div><p><strong>HYPATIA PERSONAL:</strong> Go back a moment, you work in the space port?</p></div><div><p><strong>AIDAN:</strong> Worked in, past tense yes. It’s long since been blown to so much snow and dust by now.</p></div><div><p><strong>HYPATIA PERSONAL:</strong> That leads into my next question, there weren’t a lot of survivors from the space port, and if you were in the control centre then how did you, well how did you even survive?</p></div><div><p><strong>AIDAN:</strong> I left.</p></div><div><p><strong>HYPATIA PERSONAL:</strong> You, left? Just like that? There where dreadnoughts in the sky and you carried on clocking out?</p></div><div><p><strong>AIDAN:</strong> Yes. WUC wouldn’t have paid me overtime. And I needed to get to the high-school. Ezra didn’t have the car today, it was his Father’s turn. We could only afford one vehicle. The subways would be a target.</p></div><div><p><strong>HYPATIA PERSONAL:</strong> Your file implies the three of you lived together, and if you could only afford one then how?</p></div><div><p><strong>AIDAN:</strong> I stole one. Hot wiring is easy enough so I set off for the school. The alarms have been running long enough to spook anyone not bound to a desk, bound to die. The anti-missiles batteries are overwhelmed enough for one to slip through, it only takes one. One bright spark to ruin a dry field. One straw to break the camel’s back. One missile sputtering in low and knocking a hole in the original defence stratagem. I slip through the carnage on the same principle.</p></div><div><p><strong>EZRA MASON:</strong> So the sky is burning, I’m in this heard of people charging through the hallways. Everyone just panicked, no orderly file to the exits like any fire drill we practiced. It all just went out the window the moment things blew up- I should have gone out the window in hindsight. The floor was soft beneath my feet, I didn’t notice- didn’t realize not at first but I, well. I couldn’t make myself look down to confirm it anyways. And then at the door I see my smug saviour parting the crowd around him like some sort of, almighty traffic pylon.</p></div><div><p><strong>ALEXANDER ENSIGN:</strong> If people where being trampled in the rush, how did you make it out? How did your ‘saviour’ just stand there?</p></div><div><p><strong>EZRA MASON:</strong> ... I’m almost two meters tall and I was the star geeball player for two years. If that wasn't enough, Aidan- my rescuer, he looks <em>down</em> at me. Like he looks down both metaphorically in that he’s got a superiority complex bigger than the Alexander, and literally in that he’s got to tilt his head to the floor to see me. Even without his whole terrifying ice queen routine thing you don’t want to fuck with Aidan. I’ve never heard him raise his voice before, but he was yelling my name loud enough to hear over the sirens. I ran.</p></div><div><p><strong>ALEXANDER ENSIGN:</strong> So you go to Aidan, then what Mr- Ezra?</p></div><div><p><strong>EZRA MASON:</strong> He grabs me by the arm and yanks me around the corner to where he’s hidden the car behind a snow drift, didn’t understand why until I see two kids the year below me fight a teacher off and steal her car. Everyone is desperate. He starts us to the outskirts, I’m fiddling with the radio, trying to find something to listen to and then there’s this emergency broadcast about shuttles picking up survivors. It was talking about the space port but that’s up in smoke. So I want to go get my Dad, he works in the refinery. Aidan slaps me in the back of the head and wheels us towards the centre of town where two groups of shuttles should be heading down. He starts to lecture me all <em>“Ezra Mason there’s shuttles landing there already”</em> and then this, crack. Like when something breaks the sound barrier. It echoes out over the ice sheet and we see this, cloud. Not smoke, not fog, too greasy and slow moving for those- falling down over the refinery. I panic, if it’s being bombed then my Dad’s in danger but uh. Turns out whatever made that cloud didn’t make the cracking noise. It was the ice sheet actually cracking open under the bombardment. We didn’t get the chance to change course anyways, a chasm opened up beneath us. Swallowed the car whole. It was this bulky all terrain thing, Aidan thought it was tacky to have something so large, Dad wanted it so he could carpool to work. His sense of community saved us in the end. Then everything goes a bit blurry cause I hit my head on the way down into the ice sheet and the next thing I know Aidan is sticking a finger in the cut on my forehead.</p></div><div><p><strong>AIDAN:</strong> When the ice opened up our vehicle slide down sideways. A flurry of snow like stars and the sudden impact I’ll admit, knocked me unconscious for a moment. When I came Ezra’s door was unobstructed, though the opening of the chasm wasn’t that far away just yet. Light still poured in, even through the sudden smoke clouds trying to choke the sun. Everyone thinks that living on an ice-ball means clouds all the time.</p></div><div><p><strong>HYPATIA PERSONAL:</strong> You actually fell into a fissure and got out? That’s some kind of miracle.</p></div><div><p><strong>AIDAN:</strong> No such thing as miracles. The car was wider than it was tall. I locked my door then, assessed Ezra for injuries and it caused him to become conscious once more. We, argued. Briefly. I had my snow boots, the truck had my set of ice climbing picks. We rolled down the window and climbed through. Ezra took the picks first, we where trying to get out of there before another missile struck. So I had my snow boots wedged into the truck hood for balance. Because Ezra was to stand on my shoulders see, he almost took out an eye but we got him standing. We hadn’t slid down too far yet, with both of us together it was only a short scramble to the top. The plan was for him to drop the picks back down. I wouldn’t get a boost but he would help pull me up from the top. And then-</p></div><div><p><strong>EZRA MASON:</strong> And then the fucker misses, I’m swearing in this by the way I decided- Aidan misses my throw and one of the little buffers tumbles into the abyss. Aidan has one ice pick, I have no rope. Then guess what the crazy bastard does?</p></div><div><p><strong>ALEXANDER ENSIGN:</strong> I have no idea. This is your after action report. Are you sure they gave you the right dose of painkillers?</p></div><div><p><strong>EZRA MASON:</strong> Any less and I’d be crying, so be thankful they broke out the good stuff yes?</p></div><div><p><strong>ALEXANDER ENSIGN:</strong> I’ll do my best, now, what did Aidan do?</p></div><div><p><strong>EZRA MASON:</strong> He backs up to the far wall, gets a running start and with his arms way over his head he takes a running leap up the wall and slams the pick in. He’s dangling there halfway up the ice shelf, he starts walking his legs up, curled into this little ball and then he stands on the ice pick. Aidan is digging his hands into the ice and straightening up trying not to slip. He yells at me to give him a hand, so I lie down and stretch as far as I can. No dice, just a bit too far. So he jumps for it again- no warning just grabs on and the big bastard literally pulled my arm out of its socket. Then he uses me like a goddamn rope to climb up, grumbling about me not helping haul him up. I’m a bit busy trying not to pass out from the pain at this point, not having both of us slide back down into that pit.</p></div><div><p><strong>ALEXANDER ENSIGN:</strong> Okay then. So, you’re down one arm, and your getaway vehicle. What next?</p></div><div><p><strong>EZRA MASON:</strong> By the time I’ve caught my breath enough for things to start making sense again we’ve travelled the last bit into town. I’m freezing, Aidan is even colder. He’s always cold, he wears thermals inside, keeps heating packs in his pockets, steals half of the clean laundry to wear at once and has this parka rated as far down as they make em-</p></div><div><p><strong>ALEXANDER ENSIGN:</strong> I get the picture. You’re back in town, and?</p></div><div><p><strong>AIDAN:</strong> Then he bolts, towards the refinery run rendered lopsided like some hunting dog by his pain. I, let him go. I needed a vehicle.</p></div><div><p><strong>HYPATIA PERSONAL:</strong> Huh, all that trouble and you just let him go?</p></div><div><p><strong>AIDAN:</strong> I didn’t think he’d be able to make it that far on foot, or get into that much trouble. We’d missed Beitech landing its first wave of ground troops though. I believe they were ordered to non-lethally incapacitate vital personal, I saw them shoot several no casually dressed people. I was wearing refinery coveralls. They ordered me down and left one goon to guard me while the rest carried on searching.</p></div><div><p><strong>HYPATIA PERSONAL:</strong> And how did you get away?</p></div><div><p><strong>AIDAN:</strong> I don’t know. They hit me in the head and my next clear memory is riding an all terrain towards the refinery, Ezra, the troopers who shot him, Mr Mason, disgusting black tendrils dripping from below the cloud layer and all.</p></div><div><p><strong>HYPATIA PERSONAL:</strong> Riiight. So, you find Ezra, and he’d been shot? How do you get him back from the troops.</p></div><div><p><strong>AIDAN:</strong> When knocked horizontal I do believe the human body counts as a type of terrain. I was in a rush, the shuttles wouldn’t be running forever. They had bigger things to worry about besides, a squadron of Cyclone’s had entered atmo and had begun assault runs on their Warlocks and any large groups not obviously fleeing. I made it obvious we where fleeing after hauling Ezra up. He was bleeding profusely and the medcentre was close by, had shuttles still taking off from it. Either there’s be one to take us away or we’d be in a place with bandages and painkillers to die in. They hadn’t all left yet, Ezra passed out, he wouldn’t put pressure on the wound- they shot him in the strained arm he should have been able to grip. Medics took him to Alexander, I took the regular evac shuttle to my new home here on Hypatia.</p></div></blockquote>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. 0101010001101000011100100110010101100101</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div>
  <p>Ezra Mason is still tanned from ice glare, stripes of freckles in irregular lines on his face. A reverse watch band on his wrists where skin peaked out between gloves and sleeve rendered ill fitting from a final growth spurt. He wears standard UTA shirts instead of thermals now, conscript clothing. He makes friends that rib him about his weird hick skin and he bites back about how pasty they are, all friendly. All warm.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Geeball field burn lingers in his skin long after his comatose Father is bleached pale. Some of the refinery workers had been moved to the Copernicus for superior medical care. Some of Hypatia’s crew and civilians with medical training had been moved to Copernicus to help in providing said superior medical care. None from Alexander. Funny that.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Ezra didn’t notice how desperate the UTA was to plug their leaks, be was busy training, or fighting to be allowed in his Father’s hospital room. Separate airlocks, space and plastic sheeting guarded the patients.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Ezra Mason didn’t understand why, just that he was quarantined from the only person left in the universe he’d call family. He told as much to his new mates, explained the person he did message sometimes Aidan was something else after all. They jostle shoulder to shoulder in so much remaining footage, he’s always smiling after. A finger-breadth too far from his Father, kilometres of void from his charity case. Yet Ezra Mason is furthest away from alone.</p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. 01000110011011110111010101110010</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p></p><div>
  <p>Three ships carried survivors into the black, four ships racing to the waypoint.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Obdurate Lincoln, strongest of the dreadful retinue left behind.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>The prizes at the end of her wild hunt;</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Resolute Copernicus.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Exacting Hypatia.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>And, the adverse variable in it all.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Sacrosanct Alexander.</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>In the battle Alexander fought like it was a living beast. Above those pretty skies coughing smoke and stranger things into the stratosphere pilots moved like swarms or shoals. Like ants rebuilding their nest shuttles dive across the gaps between the three, like good prey they flee slow and steady in this pursuit. Slowly, at half capacity. Not for the Copernicus, far beyond better years. Nor for Hypatia, delicately studded with sensors that would be sacrificed in a second for the people inside. They drift at half pace for Alexander.<br/>
Infallible United Terran Authority engineering, brought to a halt by seemingly nothing at all. Scarred but not bleeding out, not after how the staff and the ship had fought. Like they never had before, and never will again.</p>
  <p>They travel so slowly because <em>the ship</em> isn't meant to fight</p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. 01000110011010010111011001100101</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Aidan on the other hand, and in the other ship, has embraced isolation.<br/>
Adult refugees who’d been trained in anything that would be even remotely useful on a ship had mostly been taken by Alexander.<br/>
So why Aidan, who once worked in the command centre, and was scooped up in refinery gear is left behind would usually be a mystery. Except because of General Torrence, Alexander had taken almost everyone with any kind of skill in tech support, "spanner monkey and chipheads" he'd ordered. It's a lot easier to train someone how to fly a ship or shoot a gun than it is to teach someone how to fix them. While the few people left generally could pick up some of the slack, there was still onboard promotions and vacancies to deal with this sudden skeleton crew.<br/>
That meant maintenance was short staffed. No one really wants or tends to think about how much filth a single human makes. How much accumulates in a sealed metal tin. How the general biological contamination ruins sensitive equipment if not managed. So what Hypatia desperately needed above almost all else?<br/>
Janitors.</p>
<hr/><p>One week into the retreat Aidan has mostly vanished into the background of overworked crew tugging maglev carts throughout the halls. A month in and they’re not just “Aidan, refugee help” they’re given the same all-access codes as any vital ship native crew and disappears completely. Which is quite a trick for someone looking like that. Maybe the matte white envirosuit worked as camouflage. Wasn’t exactly standard issue, but exosuits are the only things that have inbuilt, on-file body type allowances in their fabriplans and no one could be bothered to make something custom. The colour was a perfect match for the walls though. That might have counted in some small part. Still, it's no small feat to be near invisible for most of the following desperate months.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. 010100110110100101111000</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>On Alexander the unlucky few are unconscious. On Copernicus they’re not. The situation is coming to a boil, though they don’t know that yet. Isolation has slowed the spread. You can’t tell when a pot is about to boil, you only know the difference when it starts to steam and bubble. On Copernicus it’s second before the burst. They’ve managed their Quarantine without military precision and they’re paying the price. Rules that straddle the line between mind-numbing harsh intricacies and so lax they might as well be gone keep collecting and building up. Slip ups, cheaters and liars and the unlucky masses all caught in a grasping growing web.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. 0101001101100101011101100110010101101110</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div>
  <p>FROM: <em>EzraM-Alexandercrew</em></p>
</div><div>
  <p>SUBJECT: GRADUATION PAAAAARTY!!1</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Hoooly fuckign shirt man, I’m a pilot now, like an actual pilots flying stuff pilot I’m flying a cyclone! Me! In a a cyclonw! I can’t believe it I’m gonna ttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Is that where the thing ghee is no oh nope yep that is it okay cool I got text to speak working because my keyboard fell off my desk and if I try to stand up and get it I feel like I am going to fall over which is not fun at all exclamation point exclamation mark which one is it you tell me professor Adan of nerd studies ha anyways I’m trying not to make you worry so I should probably tell you the falling over is I’m not hurt it is only because I’m just a tiny little bit</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Liquefied</p>
</div><div>
  <p>And I promise I don’t spend all my days drum king Id never get to fly if it did hahaha I’m having a celebrate shun my new mates suggested that I take a shot before telling you about this because I know you’ll still be mad about shiv civil liberties but I promise I’m happy to help and man I really should figure out how to edit this I don’t want to you to get a brick of text how the fuck do you save this thing no no I don’t want to send-</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>
    <em>Message delivered to Aidan@Hypatia</em>
  </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Or, for a sober summery;</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Four months into the retreat Ezra gives up on his casual everything is fine let Aidan assume he’s being trained for shipsec plan, which past logs prove as his cover. Then the subject sends a message- which if you don’t read drunken teenager, celebrates his promotion to flight status. Aka first in the interstellar firing-line. Apparently this buys his Father passage to the freighter Copernicus, where all the best medical staff is. That they put down shuttles at the med centre initially is the only reason, right?</p>
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